The Hunter’s Tale (14 page)

‘Her younger son brought word of it,“ Domina Elisabeth was going on. ”He’s here to take her and Ursula home again today.“

‘How was he killed?“ Dame Emma asked, more eagerly than seemly.

Domina Elisabeth fixed her with a look that warned her to silence, said crisply, “That is something for later, dame,” and returned to the rest of them. “They would be gone already except Lady Anneys has asked for one of us to go with her. That being the only comfort besides our prayers that we can offer her, Eve agreed. Dame Frevisse, it was you she asked for. Sister Johane will go with you.” Because no nun should go from the nunnery uncompanioned by another nun. “You are both excused to ready what you’ll need and meet Lady Anneys in the guesthall yard in as few minutes as possible. Sister Johane, be guided by Dame Frevisse in this and on your journeying.”

Sister Johane, already eagerly on her feet, bobbed a deep, quick curtsy, ready to be out the door and not minding the hard looks turned her way by Sister Amicia and Sister Margrett, who probably felt that if Domina Elisabeth wanted a younger nun to go, they might equally well—nay, better—have been chosen. Frevisse, nothing like so ready to go out into the world for whatever reason, rose more slowly, her eyes down to keep her prioress from reading her unwillingness, and curtsied as deeply.

Domina Elisabeth made the sign of the cross toward them and said, “My blessing on you both. Father Henry and I will be in the yard to see you away.”

Despite bishops’ best efforts that nuns be kept strictly enclosed, they were not. Now and again some family matter or other reason—even simply fishing—would take them out of their cloister. As lately as last Martinmas Sister Margrett had gone, companioned with Dame Emma, to her sister’s lying-in with a fourth child, stayed for the christening because she was to be godmother, and returned to St. Frideswide’s barely in time for Advent. Now, safely out of Domina Elisabeth’s sight, Sister Johane all but bounced up the stairs to the dorter ahead of Frevisse. Only the sad reason for their going out probably kept her from outright singing, Frevisse suspected, while they gathered a change of clothing and what little else they would need; and she remembered to be at least outwardly subdued when she followed Frevisse out the cloister door into the guesthall’s cobbled yard and with lowered eyes gave her bag to a servant to be strapped behind the saddle of one of the nunnery horses waiting for them.

Lady Anneys and Ursula were already on theirs, ready to leave, and Frevisse, giving over her bag in turn, saw with relief that the young man waiting with them was the same son who had come for Ursula those few weeks ago. The death of either of Lady Anneys’ sons was a sorrow, but Frevisse knew this one a little while the dead man was no one to her, without even a face she could put to him in her prayers unless the chance came to see him unshrouded in his coffin. With no particular feelings of her own about him, no burden of personal sorrow, she would be more free to pay heed to curbing Sister Johane—should it come to that— and in giving what comfort she could to Lady Anneys and Ursula, she supposed. Just now, though, they both looked beyond comforting, and Hugh—that was his name, Frevisse remembered—looked no better. Ursula was mounted behind him, leaning against his back, the side of her face pressed to him, her arms tightly around his waist. Lady Anneys had her own horse but was close enough to her son that they were reached out to each other, holding hands as if that were their last hold on life. They had both been crying, that was plain, and Ursula still was, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks shiny with tears. All the grief that Frevisse had not seen in Lady Anneys or her for their husband and father was terribly there now. That death had not hurt. This one did, and Frevisse foresaw that despite the golden sunshine of yet another perfect summer’s day, today’s riding was going to be dark with their pain.

She and Sister Johane had just swung astride their horses and were settling their skirts, neither of them interested in fashionable side-riding in box saddles, when Domina Elisabeth and Father Henry came from the cloister into the yard. The priest went to say something to Lady Anneys and the others. Domina Elisabeth came instead to Sister Johane, spoke too low to her for Frevisse to hear, then handed her a fair-sized, cloth-wrapped parcel that Sister Johane, nodding agreement to something, turned to tuck into the bag tied behind her saddle. Coming to Frevisse, Domina Elisabeth said, still in a low voice, “Eve given some herbs to Sister Johane that Dame Claire thought might be useful if Lady Anneys or anyone is too uncalm to sleep or rest.”

Domina Elisabeth’s choice of Sister Johane to come with her suddenly made sense to Frevisse. All of the nuns helped Dame Claire, turn and turn again, at her infirmarian tasks, but of them all, Sister Johane had so far proved the most apt to the work. Very probably the comfort she could offer by way of soothing herbs would be worth as much or more than Frevisse’s these following days, and Frevisse nodded to Domina Elisabeth with brisk understanding.

Domina Elisabeth gave a brisk nod in return and stepped back as Father Henry raised his hand to bless their journeying.

It proved to be a long, hard day’s journeying. Frevisse remembered that when Hugh had come for Ursula, he had said that by rights it should take a day and a little more of reasonable riding to reach their manor. Today they did not ride reasonably. Rather than an easy, steady pace of no great haste, they went at trot or even canter more than half the time, easing the horses only when necessary and themselves hardly at all.

The choice did not seem to be Hugh’s. More than a few times Frevisse saw him speak to Lady Anneys with concern on his face, but each time Lady Anneys shook her head against whatever he was asking her. Even when they stopped for a midday meal of sorts at some village’s alehouse, Frevisse thought Lady Anneys would have stayed in the saddle to eat, except her son dismounted, lifted Ursula down, and came to help her so firmly that, although she hesitated, she did not refuse and, when she was dismounted, let him lead her to a bench in the shade by the alehouse door.

But if Lady Anneys did not want the respite, Frevisse most definitely did. She rode well but not often enough to be ready for this kind of riding and was willing to admit that her years were telling on her. It was only pride that kept her from groaning even more than Sister Johane did at the effort of pulling themselves back into their saddles when time came to ride on.

They rode through the afternoon and into the long, pale twilight, paused for a slight supper at another alehouse, then rode on into the darkening blue of evening. A rising moon gave light enough they hardly slowed their pace, but the servant who had come with Hugh rode on ahead to warn of their coming, and when they finally rode into the manor yard, there were people waiting and lighted torches flaring in the darkness. Hugh had long since moved Ursula to ride in front of him, cradled in the curve of his arm, and she must have been asleep because as the torchlight fell on her face, she startled upright with a small cry. Hugh said something to her and she answered, “Home?,” then leaned against him, softly crying again.

A young man, who had gone first to Lady Anneys, turned to them and took Ursula from Hugh into his own arms. In the torchlight and Frevisse’s tiredness, he looked so much like Hugh that he could have been his brother. But Lady Anneys had only two sons and one of them was dead, she thought a little confusedly. But whoever he was, Ursula clung to him as readily as she had to Hugh as he carried her away, into the house, leaving Hugh to dismount and help Lady Anneys from her saddle while two girls—as dressed in black as Lady Anneys and crying—hovered close, waiting only until Hugh stepped aside before they flung themselves at her, crying harder.

More daughters, Frevisse supposed.

Wearily, she dragged herself from her own saddle, lowering herself carefully to the ground and not letting go of the horse until she had convinced her legs that they not only had to hold her up but were going to walk, too. But now, please God, this day was nearly ended and soon there would be somewhere she could lie down and sleep.

As she followed Sister Johane following a servant toward the hall, she heard Lady Anneys say to someone in a tired and aching voice, “Where’s Tom? I want to see him.”

Chapter 9

In the morning Frevisse remembered, as she awoke, where she was and wished herself asleep again. She and Sister Johane had shared a truckle bed rolled from under Lady Anneys’ own in an upper bedchamber, and although she had stayed awake and upright long enough to undress down to her undergown and fold her clothing onto a nearby stool, she had noticed nothing beyond that, simply lain down and fallen to sleep. She had awakened when Lady Anneys came in with her daughters but only enough to realize that beyond the bedchamber there was a room that must be theirs. Then she had slept again. Now it was morning, with nothing she looked forward to about the day.

Wary of her aches and stiffness, she sat up. Lady Anneys’ bed had been slept in but she was not there now, and to judge by the open door and the quiet from the farther room, the girls were gone, too. That she had not heard them at all, as well as slept through her usual hours of prayer, told Frevisse how tired and deeply sleeping she must have been. Beside her, Sister Johane was still deeply sleeping and Frevisse took the chance to see better where they were. Someone had unshuttered the bedchamber’s one, unglassed window before they left, letting in the gray light of an overcast day, letting her see not only the wide bed that nearly filled the room but its faded, plain green curtains and the two large, flat-topped chests set along one wall with a hunting dagger in its sheath lying on one of them. There was a small table beside the door with a pottery pitcher and basin and a white towel on it. A man’s brown doublet and white shirt hung somewhat carelessly over the single wall-pole. Her own and Sister Johane’s travel bags were leaning against the wall beside the truckle bed. That was all.

It was not so much a bare room, Frevisse thought, as a barren room. As if someone had been here but not lived in it. Except for the man’s clothing and the dagger—the dead son’s, she realized; he would have slept here as the manor’s new lord, when his mother was gone—it was a room curiously empty of anyone. Even empty, a room usually carried some sense of who lived in it. This room was no one’s. Admittedly the young man had maybe had too little time to make it fully his own, but even though Lady Anneys must have lived and slept here for years and very probably birthed her children here, there was nothing of her either and there should be. Embroidered cushions on the chests for softer sitting. A plant on the windowsill. Bright painted patterns on the plaster walls or on the roof beams. A woven mat on the floor. Something that said someone belonged here. But there was nothing. As if she had never been here at all.

Frevisse made to crawl out of the bed, deliberately clumsy at it so that Sister Johane awoke, mumbled, rolled over, awoke a little more, enough to open her eyes and say, pleased, “We slept in. Wonderful. If we haven’t missed breakfast.”

‘We’re late for Prime,“ Frevisse answered.

‘This morning?“ Sister Johane protested. ”Now?“

‘Now,“ Frevisse said.

Sister Johane sighed heavily but made no other protest. They dressed and took their breviaries from their bags and, kneeling on either side of the truckle bed, set to the shortened Office that was allowed to nuns when traveling. Sister Johane, despite Frevisse’s attempt to hold to a reasonable pace, rushed at the prayers and psalms, shortening the Offices more, reached the end with,
“Et fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace. Amen”
—And the souls of the faithful through the mercy of God rest in peace—in a burst of speed, slapped her breviary closed, and was climbing stiffly to her feet before Frevisse had finished saying that final
Amen.
Another time Frevisse would have been irked into snapping at her for her haste—or, better, gently rebuked her—but just now the effort was too much and Frevisse let it go. Working her way to her own feet was trouble enough; but when Sister Johane headed for the stairs down to the hall while Frevisse was still slipping on her shoes, Frevisse said, “Sister,” just quellingly enough that Sister Johane stopped, abashed, and waited, as was proper, for Frevisse to lead.

The overcast sky made judging the time difficult but there had been sounds enough, both from outside and downstairs, for Frevisse to think the morning was well begun. She found, upon opening the door at the stairfoot, that indeed breakfast had already happened for some, but a pitcher and the ample remains of a cold meat pie still waited at one end of the high table, and Lady Anneys, Ursula, and the two girls Frevisse presumed were her other daughters were standing nearby it. The gray day, the hall in its shadows, and their mourning dresses—that they had begun to wear for one death and now would wear for two—made for more gloom. But presently, mercifully, no one was crying.

Frevisse admitted the ungraciousness of that thought even as she had it. She was still weary from yesterday’s ride, did not want to be here, did not know what was expected of her, and was altogether far from happy about anything. Was she supposed to give comfort to Lady Anneys? The woman had a son and three daughters who were surely better suited to that than a nun she barely knew. On yesterday’s long ride, Frevisse had considered that she was maybe meant to be a guard for Lady Anneys against that man who had troubled her at the nunnery. But surely he wouldn’t be so much a fool as to plague her with his attentions for this while.

There were no servants in sight but Ursula moved immediately to pour ale from the pitcher into two waiting cups while Lady Anneys said, weary-voiced but with attempted graciousness, “My ladies, good morrow.” Though “good” was probably the last thing the day seemed to her. She was pale and holding herself in the way of someone determined to go on despite a wound whose pain was almost overwhelming them. “Would you please to meet my other daughters?” She gestured to the older of the girls. “Lady Elyn.” Who was not so young as Frevisse had thought her by torchlight last night. She was not a girl but a young woman, and as she briefly curtsied, her mother said, “She’s wed to our neighbor Sir William Trensal.”